Black Caviar’s trainer Moody exits racing

High-profile trainer Peter Moody walks away from racing without a Melbourne Cup but with a Black Caviar.

The unbeaten champion sprinter brought Moody international acclaim.

Yet, at 46, Moody has pulled the pin on his training career.

“I’m over it,” he declared after an 18-month saga over cobalt that has been both financially and personally draining.

Moody beat the most serious cobalt charge: administering a prohibited substance to affect a racehorse’s performance.

He initially vowed to return after being outed for six months on lesser charges over Lidari’s cobalt reading after his second in the 2014 Group One Turnbull Stakes, which the trainer’s camp blamed on an oral hoof treatment.

Moody has now decided to wind up his 300-horse training operation, believing he is doing it on his own terms.

“For the fact that I can walk away confidently and know that I’ve been judged not to be a cheat has made that decision somewhat easier,” he told reporters at his Caulfield stable on Tuesday.

Moody maintains the cobalt saga affecting a number of trainers has been blown out of proportion.

“Unfortunately due to the deeds of probably the great mare Black Caviar, I’ve probably become unfortunately the public face of it and I didn’t want that to continue,” he said.

Moody said no one else was to blame and he was no longer bitter, but still believed he did nothing wrong.

“I’m still disappointed that I was penalised in any way, shape or form because I don’t believe I did any wrong,” he said.

“If anything the practices within my workplace mightn’t have been up to scratch and they may have become lax and it cost me. But is that any reason to take a person’s livelihood away from them?”

Moody has trained five of the last six Australian Racehorses of the Year and about 2500 winners, including 53 at the top Group One level, but he said the quality of horses dropped significantly during the cobalt saga and he was unable to attract new business.

Moody does want some sort of future in the racing industry.

“It’s been my lifeline and my livelihood probably since I’ve been about 10 years old,” he said.

“Maybe in three or four months’ time if anyone’s looking for an unemployed 46-year-old racehorse trainer that doesn’t know how to do anything else, maybe give me a yell. I’ll be looking for a job.”

Moody never won one of Australian racing’s “big four”: a Caulfield Cup, Melbourne Cup, Cox Plate or a Golden Slipper.

That Moody can say he has no regrets is down to Black Caviar, “the thing dreams are made of”.

Moody had a quick answer when one of his daughters made a crack about Bart Cummings’ 12 Melbourne Cup wins before the legendary trainer’s death: “He’s never trained the best horse in the world that’s undefeated either, darling, so ask him that.”